Food and travel

From a French goat’s cheese coated in ash to a Spanish blue wrapped in sycamore leaves, our cheeseboard features Europe’s finest.

The UK is home to an incredible array of artisan cheese shops. Here are five of the best, each guaranteed to please even the most discerning cheese-lover.

Parmigiano Reggiano is Italy’s most celebrated cheese. To merit the name it must come from one of 300 recognised dairies and  be made using age-old techniques. This is a true labour of love — and the proof is in the product.

In the valleys and hillsides just north of San Francisco, artisan cheesemakers are taking advantage of the same varied terroir that produces world-class wines. The result? Unique cheeses flavoured by sea air and forest-lined marshes.

In a small valley in central Portugal, vineyard owners Jorge Cardoso and Fernanda Rodrigues are reviving ancient wine-making traditions, favouring clay pots over barrels.

Every part of France boasts its own alcoholic speciality, from the pastis of Provence to Burgundy’s crème de cassis and Normandy's apple brandy, calvados. Here’s our pick of the country’s top tipples.

Thessaloniki is Greece’s gastronomic heart, a melting pot city that’s constantly evolving. But when it comes to Greek cooking, some things aren’t to be messed with — no matter how modern life gets.

From perfectly prepped couscous to generous helpings of harissa, Tunisian cuisine is all about colour, flavour and abundance. In the coastal town of Nabeul, a family meal becomes a feast when guests are involved — and extra helpings are inevitable.

Pitmaster Pat Martin spends his working day barbecuing and his free time grilling — two very different things if you’re in the American South, where cooking is as much about the journey as the destination.

In central Spain, the Cabra have farmed some of the world's highest-quality saffron for four generations, using a meticulously hand-produced and largely unchanged approach.

In Sicily, Laura Lupo makes products such as pesto and torrone from her own highly prized Bronte pistachios.

In rural Quebec, Pierre Faucher has been tapping maple sap and turning it into syrup for almost 40 years.

Once a nation of nomads, today’s Kyrgyzstan is dotted with yurts only in summer. For most of the year, Kyrgyz shepherds live settled lives in the valleys, but from June to September, when the lowlands are arid, they move to summer mountain pastures, known as jailoo. 

The hills just outside Alba, in northwest Italy’s Piedmont region, are striped with neat green rows of trees and vines. The area is renowned for its wines and white truffles, but the jewel in its crown is the nocciola del Piemonte, a delicate variety of hazelnut with thin skin and crisp, dense flesh. The terroir here is ideal for these nuts: the slopes allow the soil to drain, while the altitude and climate provide the perfect temperature for the trees.

There can be few institutions more synonymous with the East End of London than pie ’n’ mash shops.